Good morning, it's Saturday, Sept. 26. The Supreme Court just cleared the way for states to run voter rolls against federal immigration databases — a system already proven to wrongly flag U.S. citizens.

Also in today's issue: ICE's quiet arrest surge, FDA nominee dodges senators, Detention spending in disarray.

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If you voted in the last election, there's a decent chance your name, your Social Security number, and your voter registration just got matched against a federal immigration database. On Friday, the Supreme Court said that's fine.

Here's what happened. The Court ruled 6-3 to let the Trump administration resume using a system called SAVE — originally built to check whether immigrants qualify for government benefits — as a tool to screen state voter rolls for potential noncitizens. Twenty-five states, mostly led by Republicans, had already uploaded their voter files to SAVE before a federal judge blocked the practice in June. That block is now lifted. All three liberal justices dissented.

Now, both parties agree that noncitizens shouldn't vote. That's already the law. But SAVE wasn't built for elections. It was designed to verify benefit eligibility. And when states started using it to check voters, the results raised serious concerns.

In Travis County, Texas, officials looked into 97 voters that SAVE flagged as likely noncitizens. At least 10 percent — and possibly up to 21 percent — turned out to be U.S. citizens. That's not a rounding error. That's eligible voters being told, wrongly, that they don't belong on the rolls. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson's dissent cited one plaintiff whose registration was revoked and she never even knew.

Here's a detail that hasn't gotten enough attention. Tens of millions of voter records were run through SAVE before the June block. The system links each voter's personal data — including their Social Security number — to federal immigration records. And SAVE keeps that data for 10 years. This isn't a one-time check. It's a decade-long link between your voter file and a federal database built for immigration enforcement. Election officials in at least five states have confirmed the system wrongly flagged eligible citizens.

The lower court that blocked SAVE found that the Department of Homeland Security was likely misusing Social Security data and violating privacy rights. But the 6-3 majority set that ruling aside.

Here's the thing about timing. Federal law bars systematic voter roll purges within 90 days of an election — a rule meant to prevent last-minute chaos. So this ruling won't trigger mass removals before the November midterms. But it does allow individual citizenship checks right now on a case-by-case basis. And after November, the door is wide open for states to resume bulk screening with the Court's full backing.

Both sides have real arguments here. Supporters say states need reliable tools to ensure only citizens vote, and SAVE is the best option available. Critics say the system was never designed for this, produces too many errors, and creates a chilling effect — especially on naturalized citizens and communities where English isn't the first language, who face the greatest burden of proving they belong. The evidence so far — documented false positives, revoked registrations, retained personal data — suggests the system needs serious reform before it's used at scale.

Watch for individual states running one-off SAVE checks in the weeks before the midterms. And after November, the real test: how aggressively states resume bulk screening, and whether any of them fix the error rates first.

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ICE's quiet summer surge drove arrests to record highs — topping 43,000 in June, more than 49,000 in July, and nearly 51,000 in August — without the large-scale raids that drew mass protests earlier this year. A New York Times investigation reviewed more than 50 incidents and found people detained while delivering food, leaving church, attending a soccer game, and having drinks at a nightclub. In July, just 27 percent of those arrested had a criminal conviction — an all-time low, meaning nearly three in four people detained had no criminal record. The strategy traded visibility for reach: by moving away from headline-grabbing operations, ICE faced less organized resistance while casting a far wider net into everyday civilian life.

FDA nominee Heidi Overton repeatedly declined to correct President Trump's false claims about vaccines during her Senate confirmation hearing Thursday. Overton, a 37-year-old preventive medicine physician who would be the youngest FDA commissioner ever, said the MMR vaccine is safe and effective — but would not directly challenge Trump's claim that it could be lethal. On mifepristone, the drug used in the majority of U.S. abortions, she acknowledged a safety review but wouldn't say whether she'd restrict access. Senator Maggie Hassan, a Democrat from New Hampshire, asked Overton to name one thing the president has ever been wrong about. She got no answer. The FDA oversees products tied to roughly 20 cents of every dollar Americans spend — and has been without a confirmed leader since May.

A GAO investigation found ICE spent tens of millions on detention facilities it never used. The agency bought 11 large warehouses for roughly $1.07 billion to convert into detention centers, then scrapped plans for seven of them before housing a single person — burning at least $20 million in costs it can't recover. The Defense Department spent $2.85 million assembling tents at Guantánamo Bay that sat empty. ICE paid $7.1 million for unneeded meals at Fort Bliss because of rigid vendor contracts. Congress gave ICE an unprecedented $45 billion to expand detention, but the GAO found the agency still has no strategic plan for spending it. One Florida facility charged $249 per bed per night — 171 percent above ICE's median rate.

The share of people arrested by ICE this summer who had no criminal conviction — an all-time high. As monthly arrests reached record levels, nearly three out of four people detained were not accused of any crime, according to the Deportation Data Project.

P.S. Which worries you more — noncitizens voting or citizens wrongly flagged? Hit Reply — We Read Everyone.